Recent reports have revealed that the upcoming HTC flagship is codenamed as Imagine. Popular leakster Evan Blass had previously claimed that it would be launching as HTC U12 in late April. Based on the fresh information received from a person who is familiar with the plans of HTC, Blass claims that the arrival of the flagship has been delayed to early May. Moreover, he has stated that the Taiwanese company will be launching its next flagship as U12+, and not U12.

At the end of 2017, HTC had sold the employees who worked on the Pixel smartphones to Google. In February, it had laid off several employees from its U.S. wing and it is rumored to layoff more workers in future. Hence, it is quite evident that the company is going through a rough patch. Blass claims that since HTC has met with such problems, it has been finally forced to launch fewer phones this year. This could be the reason why HTC could be skipping the U12 phone to launch the U12+ as its next flagship.

In May 2017, HTC had announced the U11 flagship while the U11+ flagship had arrived with a full screen design at the end of 2017. Blass is of the view that even though the company is not launching U12, it plans to debut its upcoming flagship as U12+ in order to rival with the Samsung Galaxy S9+.

According to the tipster, the U12+ will include a 6-inch LCD screen that will produce WQHD+ resolution. The Snapdragon 845 SoC is expected to drive the flagship phone. It may arrive in variants like 64 GB storage + 4 GB RAM and 128 GB storage + 6 GB RAM. The HTC will include a microSD card slot for additional storage and a fast charging enabled 3,420mAh battery.

Shown above is the render of the U12+. The handset will be loaded with Android 8.0 Oreo. It is pegged to feature a second-generation Edge Sense pressure-sensitive metal frame. The back panel of the phone will be fitted with a fingerprint scanner. For photography, the U12+ is expected to come with 8-megapixel dual front-facing cameras and 16-megapixel + 12-megapixel dual rear cameras.

Blass has stated that HTC had met with a temporary issue with the development of U12+. Hence, instead of launching it in late April, it may unveil it in early May. He added that that the company will be also launching Desire 12 and Desire 12+ smartphones in future.

A recent report had revealed that the company had $89.3 million in revenue in the previous which is 44 percent lower than the revenue it generated in February last year. Do you think that the U12+ will be met with better sales to cut down on the losses? Share us your thoughts by posting your comments below.